


Silent Witness to Forgotten Hope

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Combined AU Shorts [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, Don’t copy to another site, GFY, Gen, Non-Graphic Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 00:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18954439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: She is silent witness to the torment Morgoth heaps upon Maedhros, to each cut and burn and cruelty. In turn, he takes away with him hope long forgotten when Fingon cuts him from Thangorodrim's walls.





	Silent Witness to Forgotten Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This began with a plot bunny I was not planning to write, and it is become a foundation bit for everything Cúnessa becomes in her various iterations across various AUs. Hence why it links into several of them.
> 
> Thank you to Lferion for encouragement and sanity checking!

The elda brought captive to Angband has hair the color of fire, that she has never seen before. Russet-coated warg pups, but they never stayed such a shade, and certainly never an elda. Or once-elda.

His fëa glimmers when she watches him from the corners of her eyes, if only for a moment before her attention is commanded on him. Watching at her Master's command the torment of the elda. Knives and chains and brands. Never the needle, though, never the dark blood-mixed ink pricked under his skin, even when it was layed bare to whatever might be done.

It is a kindness that should never be, or it is a greater cruelty than was given her and her kin. She isn't certain which, and she cradles her confusion close as the anger that burns under her skin. Silent watcher, even when he is left alone by her Master and his Wolf, and he commands - instructs, asks, begs - her to loose him, to lead him free of this place. Eventually just to speak to him, that he might hear a voice that is not that of her Master or his Wolf.

She shakes her head, that much response allowed her. She is the watcher, silent servant of her Master, though she rages against it. Doesn't know how to regain her voice, only how to do as she is bidden, to survive this place. As anyone who is here knows, save this one she is bidden watch over in his torment.

He will learn.

Or he will die.

No matter if he lives or dies, it will not change this place, not for him, nor for her, not for any that dwell in the darkness, hidden away from the stars that had seen her birth.

It is long and long before her Master takes the elda from the torments of the Wolf, and bids her watch as he binds the Elda's sword-hand in tight and heavy bands of steel, and drives great spikes into the walls of Thangorodrim to hold those bands well. None will free the elda from his torment save if her Master has some moment of mercy, not even his Wolf.

She watches until she is bidden leave the elda to his fate in the ashen twilight of Thangorodrim under the clouds. Returned once more to her place in the shadows, where she can do nothing but survive and remember. There will be no one else who shall care to remember the flame of the elda's hair, or his voice before it had become rough with his screams. His face before the Wolf had scarred it.

There is a moment, later, when she hears something different from the yowling of the beasts of her Master's army, the din of his Workings that ring always in her ears. Something she has no name for, but makes her blink back tears that have long been lost to her.

It does not last, and with it goes a last glimmer of hope that had hidden deep beneath fear and anger and pain, leaving only a bleak rage. There are no elda in Angband, and she has none to stand silent watch over to remember what once was.

So she comes to her Master, and in the shadows she bends her knee and her neck to the burning ink gifted her. Given back something of her voice, though she knows not what to do with it, and raised up over those who had broken and twisted until even their own kin would not know them.

It is not freedom, but it is power, and she will take what she is given. Learn what her Master will teach her, now that she no longer fights him, and do as she is bidden. For perhaps one day it will be enough to give her a place as equal to her Master's Wolf, and what can she hope for but that?


End file.
